After
by something less sappy
Summary: After Third Impact. Short for now. Will soon cross with Harry Potter. Ch. 3 up.
1. Ch 1

(A/N: This takes place right after End ends. I try to be as accurate as I can. However, I don't actually own the thing , so there might be a few errors. If you spot any, please tell me, and I'll try to correct it. There is one thing I did on purpose- in the movie, Asuka is covered in bandages at the end. This didn't make any sense to me, so I ignored it. I hope you don't mind. Anyway, on with the story. Don't forget to reveiw, please!)

The Red sea and the infinite beach were all that remained.

Shinji let himself fall back onto the sand. He closed his eyes and covered his ears. But the red cast still made it's way through his eyelids and he could still hear the awful waves. He could still hear Asuka breathing.

After a moment, he heard her sit up.

"Shinji." she said. "What happened?"

He didn't answer, but he did open his eyes and look at her. Her back was to him, but he could see her flaming hair, and the unsteady motion of her back as she breathed. Her left arm was hanging at a very odd angle, but she didn't seem to notice.

Suddenly, she stood up, looking all around across the barren landscape. When her eyes fell on him, he was able to see her face. She looked like a lost little girl, with frightened tears in her eyes. He looked away, and she called his name again. He covered his face with his hands.

She looked back across the shore. She thought she could see something in the distance, but she wasn't sure.

"Shinji." she said yet again. "Was that Third Impact? Is everyone dead?' When he stayed silent, her voice reached a hysterical pitch- "Shinji! _What happened?_ God, what happened? Where are we? Where is everyone?_ Answer me!_" 

He sat up and glared at her. "_I don't know_."

She half sat, half fell, back to the sandy ground again, and put her haed between her knees.

* * *

An indeterminable amount of time later (there was no sun left to gauge the hours), Asuka raised her head.

"Shinji, we should try to find someone. We can't be the only ones left. At the very least, we need to find some food."

Of course, he said nothing.

She stood up unsteadily, and began to walk inland (if such a thing as inland existed anymore), towards whatever it was she had thought she'd spotted earlier. She couldn't feel anything in her left arm, but she felt the weight of it on her shoulder. She tried not to think about it. Those damned SEELE Eva's had cut the arm off her Unit 02, and there had been no NERV to cut the synch ratio between them. 

She wondered whether she was dead or not.

Her mother was supposed to have protected her.

* * *

When Asuka had walked a good ways, she noticed that Shinji was still in his origianal spot. She turned back and called to him. It was bad enough without being completely alone.

To her mild surprise, he got up and followed after her, no doubt thinking the same thing.

* * *


	2. Ch 2

(A/N:Thanks so much for the reviews! As promised, here's the next chappie. I hope you like it.

Oh, and I hope you'll still reveiw even though I'm no longer coercing you into it.)

Chapter Two

Sleeping on the cold ground under the empty red sky was bad enough without dreams.

Asuka woke up with her heart beating fast, her mouth dry. She had dreamt Shinji tried to strangle her. She couldn't know that a yard or two away from her, Shinji was having the same nightmare.

Asuka studied his sleeping form. She hadn't noticed before, in the red light, that he was bleeding. His hands, folded to his chest and twitching, were covered in blackish blood.

No, she must have noticed before, because in her dream, his hands around her neck were sticky and bloody. Involuntarily, she put her own hand to her throat. There was something growing in the back of her mind. Something she didn't want to face. But the knowledge became too big for her to ignore, and in one moment she realized- it had been real. He had tried to kill her, back on the beach, before she really woke up. Shinji had wanted to kill her.

Asuka doubled over. "Don't kill me," she said aloud, involuntarily. Then, more quietly, "I'm not your doll!"

Shinji opened his eyes, and listened to her weeping. He didn't feel anything.

* * *

It must have been at least a day more of walking that the air suddenly changed. Asuka stopped in her tracks, and knew without knowing how she knew and without really beleiving, that she was now in a different world altogether. She looked back. Shinji, though only a yard behind her, seemed so far away that she involuntarily stretched out a hand towards him in desperation. Quickly, she drew it back, and he luckily didn't notice. In a few moments, he reached the same spot, and looked around him in surprise as he felt the same change she had. neither said anything.

* * *

Asuka had taken the fact that neither of them had died of thirst as more evidence that they were already dead and this was some kind of private Hell constructed specifically for the two of them. Shinji hadn't even noticed how long they'd been wandering. He was too busy being lost inside his own head.

Asuka kept her eyes on the horizon, and eventually a form began to take shape there- it was big and black and ran along the earth like a city.

When they got closer, they could see it wasn't a city at all, but a forest. As soon as Asuka identified it, she felt a bubble of hope in her stomach- a forest in the middle of the desert? There had to be water and food nearby.

* * *


	3. Ch 3

Chapter Three

The forest did indeed have various streams running through it- from which Asuka drank eagerly and bathed gratefully. They would have found food, too, if they had known how to look.

And the trees were merciful, blocking out the harsh red sky (which had begun to fade anyway) and bringing the releif of semidarkness. The variety, too, of the close trees and plants was wonderful.

They didn't speak to each other at all, and Shinji always seemed completely unaware of his surroundings. Asuka grew tired of wondering (never worrying, of course) about him and decided to ignore him as he was doing her.

She just wanted to find someone. If she could just know that they weren't the only ones, then maybe she could begin to feel something or at least start to think properly, then maybe something could make sense for once.

* * *

After a while, the two wanderers bagan to pick up a sense of day and night. The dense wood was always dark, but sometimes seemed darker than others.

One (dare we say it?) _day_, Asuka woke up to something at first utterly unfamiliar. She lay motionless for a while, trying to decipher the sound that so sweetly and faintly filled her conciousness. Finally, she recognized it- birdsong! She almost laughed out loud. She had only heard birds sing but a few times in her life, and never in her childhood.

There were birds here.

How beautiful!

* * *

As they pressed on, eventually the forest began to thin. Day and night were clearly distinguishable now, the sky had lost its crimson hue, and one night Asuka even thought she saw a star winking ever so palely on the horizon.

The red sea, however, remained in her ears, though she knew they must be a world and about a hundred kilometers away by now.

* * *


End file.
